[ExI] New LIGO rumor

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Sat Aug 26 14:27:26 UTC 2017


​There is a rumor that LIGO has found another gravitational wave event, but
what's new is that this time they've matched it up with something that
optical telescopes can see. If true that almost certainly was caused by
merging Neutron Stars not merging Black Holes. It all started when
astronomer  J Craig Wheeler tweeted: "*New LIGO source with optical
counterpart. Blow your sox off!*" That may also explain a otherwise
enigmatic tweet from another astronomer, Andy Howell, that was sent just
last week:  “*Tonight is one of those nights where watching the
astronomical observations roll in is better than any story any human has
ever told*.”

If it happened last week the new Virgo detector was online so maybe they
used it to triangulate and that's how they could pinpoint where the wave
came from and tell the optical astronomers where to look.  According to the
rumor it happened in a large old elliptical galaxy called  NGC 4993 about
130 million light years away, and that
​ is​
just the sort of place you'd expect to find merging Neutron stars,
​
​
130 million light
​years
 is much
​closer​

​than​
​
 the Black Hole mergers
​,​
but then it would have to be if LIGO could detect it because Neutron Stars
produce weaker
​Gravitational
 Waves than Neutron Stars, although they are more common. All LIGO will
officially say about all this is:

“*A very exciting O2 Observing run is drawing to a close August 25. We look
forward to posting a top-level update at that time*.”

We should know soon.

 John K Clark
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